The robots contain miniaturized sensors which are deployed as they traverse a cave or other subsurface environment.
The scientists named their patent-pending concept the "Breadcrumb-Style Dynamically Deployed Communication Network" paradigm or DDCN, based on the fairy tale 'Hansel and Gretel'. According to Fink, DDCN could help resolve one of NASA's Space Technology Grand Challenges by helping overcome the limited ability of current technology to safely"If you remember the book, you know how Hansel and Gretel dropped breadcrumbs to make sure they'd find their way back.
The rovers are connected via a wireless data connection and deploy communication nodes. They're also continuously monitoring their environment. When a rover sense that signal is fading, but still within range, it drops a communication node, regardless of the distance it has covered after placing the last node.The rovers need no hand-holding from their mother, said Fink. Each subordinate rover will make it on its own.
All data collected by the robotic explorers will return to the mother rover on the surface. As a result, retrieving the robots is not required once their job is completed."Instead of wasting resources to get them into the cave and back out, it makes more sense to have them go as far as they possibly can and leave them behind once they have fulfilled their mission, run out of power, or succumbed to a hostile environment," said Fink.
"The communication network approach introduced in this new paper has the potential to herald a new age of planetary and astrobiological discoveries," said Dirk Schulze-Makuch, president of the German Astrobiological Society and author of many publications on extraterrestrial life. "It finally allows us to explore Martian lava tube caves and the subsurface oceans of the icy moons – places where extraterrestrial life might be present.
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